Saturday, October 25, 2014

VATICAN MUSEUMS - CHIARAMONTI MUSEUM (New Wing)

1817/22 Raffaele
Stern (1774/1820), so called to distinguish it from the already existing
wing of the library

Dimensions: 70 x 8 m (230 x 26 feet)

It divided the Belvedere Court in three
parts, creating the central courtyard of the Library

Twelve columns of granite were taken in 1819 from the chapel of the Palazzo Barberini, in Via
dei Giubbonari

Top stucco bas-reliefs by Francesco Massimiliano Laboureur (1767/1831) Roman
neoclassical sculptor, author also of the colossal statue of Napoleon, in the
Lions Square of Ajaccio, the birthplace of the “Empereur”

FLOOR with mosaics of the second century AD
from one of two villas at Tor Marancia excavated in the years 1817/23, near the
present stream of Grotta Perfetta:

Augustus is represented here when he was
about forty years old and on the lorica (breastplate) is represented
maybe Tiberius receiving from Phraates, king of the Parthians, the insignia
taken from Crassus in 53 BC at Carrhae and recovered only in 20 BC

“Augustus is portrayed with a gesture of
'adlocutio', that is, with his right hand raised in the act of speaking to the
soldiers. The lack of shoes allude to divine dignity, while Cupid riding a
dolphin, sculpted on the support of the statue, refers to Venus, ancestor of
the Gens Julia and heavenly ancestor of Augustus. The posture is that of the
Doryphorus of Polykleitos” (Andrea Pomella)

The statue in 1868 still showed clear traces
of original color as a newspaper reporter from the New Illustrated Universal
Newspaper describes: “...the tunic and surcoat are colored in red, fringes
of the armor parts in yellow and so on (...) the bare parts are not
flesh-colored, but with a clever cleaning (polishing) and probably with some
sort of paint-wax the beautiful color of marble has been given greater
prominence”

It was the layer of wax which is known as ganòsis, mimicking human skin

“In the exhibition entitled The Colours of
White in 2005 the Vatican Museums, in collaboration with the Glyptothek of
Munich and the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen exposed some
reconstructions of ancient works, showing them how they must have been
originally painted with colors. ( ...) Thanks to some investigations carried
out by restorers on the statue, which brought to light traces of polychrome
paint on the marble surface, it was possible to reconstruct the “palette” used
to decorate the sculpture: Egyptian blue for the fringe, for the strips of the
leather skirt and for some details of the armor pads, red for the cloak and for
some parts of the garments and slight traces of color also for the eyes and
lips, which were reconstructed using some comparisons with portraits of the
same period of the August” (Licia Capannolo)

Splendid “Pudicizia Mattei”(Modesty Mattei) from
the Villa Mattei or Celimontana with head and right hand not original, added
before 1704

Maybe it's Mnemosyne, Mother of the Muses,
from an original of the second century BC Philiskos of Rhodes

“Head of Youth” maybe a river god from the
original by Phidias on a modern bust

“Statue of Titus” (79/81) in an attitude of adlocutio,
that is, with his right hand raised to start talking, as the Augustus of Prima
Porta

His chunky body and his square and
semi-bald head did not help him very much in visually imposing the imperial
authority

“Four heads of Medusa” at the corners of the
room with an apse from the Temple of Venus and Rome, the largest Roman temple
along with that of Serapis

“Bust of Julia” daughter of Titus, original
head with curious hairstyle on a modern bust

It seems that Julia had an affair with her
uncle Domitian, who, after the death of Titus and the husband of Julia, Flavius
Sabinus, took Julia to live with him as husband and wife

After she became pregnant, Julia died and
was deified. It seems that her ashes were later secretly mixed with the ones of
Domitian by a nurse

“Juno” of the Juno Borghese of Copenhagen type
maybe from original of the fifth century BC by Alkamene

“Artemis” of the so-called Colonna type

In the hemicycle at the center “The Nile River” first century AD from
Hellenistic original from the Temple of Isis
found in S. Maria sopra Minerva, where also “The Tiber” was found now in the
Louvre

The much restored sixteen putti represent
sixteen cubits, the difference in height of the Nile between summer and winter

“Bust of Man” end of the first or beginning of
the second century AD. Very intense and marked by the expression of the hair
style

“Diana” performing the act of taking an arrow
from his quiver as she is probably staring at the prey

Famous “Athena Giustiniani” of the Antonine period
(138/192) in marble from Paros from a bronze original of the beginning of the
fourth century BC maybe by Cephisodotus or Euphranor

It was found at the beginning of 1600s near
the so-called Temple of Minerva Medica,
to which it gave the misleading name. Arms, spear and sphinx on the helmet are
modern

The name comes from having been part of the
collection of Vincenzo Giustiniani who kept it in his Palazzo Giustiniani. It
was purchased in 1805 by Lucien Bonaparte, Napoleon's brother, and then sold to
Pius VII

The snake at the foot of Athena is
connected to the complex myth of Erichthonius: according to the account of
Apollodorus of Athens, Athena went to the forge of Hephaestus to ask the
forging of some weapons

Hephaestus pounced on her, trying to
possess her and Athena, determined to save her virginity, fled. In the ensuing
struggle, the seed of Hephaestus was scattered on the ground and where it fell,
Gaea, Mother Earth, was fertilized, and begat Erichthonius

Athena, however, wanted to raise him in
secret anyway and put him in a basket with a snake

Important “Doryphoros” one of the best existing copies,
from the 440 BC bronze original by Polykleitos of Argos (about 490/425 BC)

“Characteristic of the work of Polykleitos
is the calm determination of the subject and the balanced representation of the
human body based on mathematical and geometric relationships” (Carlo Bertelli,
Giuliano Briganti, Antonio Giuliano)

“He thoroughly show the body's reaction to
the position that provides the loaded weight on one leg while the other is
free. The head, with face turned to the side corresponding to the leg loaded
with weight and firmly planted on the ground, seems to hold the figure still.
The calm and distant expression, typical of the classical period, is the one
seen in many figures of the frieze of the Parthenon. Throughout the Doryphorus'
body the forms in tension balance the relaxed ones. This combination of weight
and counterweight is defined as opposition or chiasm. The ambiguity of the
pose, walking, or still, is accompanied by that of reality or ideality that the
figure represents. Polycletus therefore continued the search of the ideal of
male beauty pursued by Greek sculptors” (John Griffiths Pedley)

Philip the Arab was an emperor with
definitely Middle Eastern features born in Shahba in Southern Syria and maybe
Christian: Eusebius of Caesarea and John Chrysostom describe him as Christian
and certainly during his reign Christians were respected unlike during the
reign of his successor Decius (249/251)

During his reign in the year 247 AD the
first millennium of the history of Rome was celebrated with major events